There are three states of being... Alive, Dead or at Sea.

Nov. 2010 – Santa Clara County Ballot Measure

I’ve been involved in local, neighborhood politics for about ten years, serving on multiple neighborhood committees. It has given me a feeling for how my neighbors are doing and for the current budget problems the City of San Jose is facing.

For example, we worked for about six years to get upgrading a neighborhood street on the table and get the funding for the work to be done, only to have the project canceled do to the current financial crisis. I’ve also seen some good, hard working City employees laid off, again because of the current financial crisis.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the following table, everyone’s solution is to raise more taxes. That is not really acceptable, because none of the citizens in the street can afford to pay more taxes. Many are out of work or working part time. There are also a lot of empty, foreclosed houses around these days.

Let’s not push more people over the edge with quick fix taxes. Let’s look for more issues, such as those represented by measures W & V, to fix the fundamental problems with our current spending.